Growing homeless camps contrast with West Coast tech wealth

Or, you know, we could allow construction of housing that people can actually afford. Portland&#x27;s <i>Willamette Week</i> free newspaper had a great writeup of the issues last year:<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.wweek.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;2016&#x2F;09&#x2F;28&#x2F;portland-needs-to-build-thousands-of-affordable-apartments-heres-why-it-keeps-coming-up-short&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.wweek.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;2016&#x2F;09&#x2F;28&#x2F;portland-needs-to-build...</a><p>But apparently if we allowed houses that people could afford, then the housing might not all be in sufficiently trendy neighborhoods. And some of it might not be pretty enough. And some of our buddies in the &quot;affordable housing&quot; nonprofits might miss out on the funding. The horrors!<p>So instead we leave people to live in tents under highway bridges. Good job Portland.<p>When <i>Willamette Week</i> is calling you out for being too anti-corporate, you know you have a problem.

Another example of people left behind by a fast-moving, dynamic economy. Along with former steel workers and others in industries that have been sent overseas, they pay the price of the transition from yesterday&#x27;s economy to today&#x27;s economy.<p>Arguably it&#x27;s good for our economy to be able to adjust to new technologies and geopolitical trends, but the human cost is immense. How could we systematically compensate for the costs incurred by those who were just in the wrong situation at the wrong time? Or how can we help people avoid getting into those wrong situations to begin with?

I don&#x27;t think it&#x27;s a coincidence that these are democratically dominated cities who heavily favor regulations. Portland in particular has been trying hard to wave or temporarily relax many of it&#x27;s regulations in order to deliver more housing, but a more sustainable solution would be to permanently end some of the less useful regulations. The irony of the situation though is that the heavy regulations are part of the reason why these cities are so desirable because certain regulations make it a nicer city. It&#x27;s hard to strike a balance on regulations.

For CA, they need to get rid of Prop 13 and use that money for infrastructure projects (thus spreading the wealth a bit). Removing prop 13 also has the benefit of reducing house prices a bit since the property tax will cause some downward pressure on prices.<p>Seattle: Just tax capital gains in the State.

If we give them Chromebooks and free WiFi, they can learn to code in 20 weeks.

This will continue as long as homeless folks are given a one way bus ticket to land up in west coast from the red states.